As a part of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's development project for a new supersonic aircraft, they had two rocket launched tests of the new scramjet engine conducted for them in Australia.
".... The so-called Supersonic Combustion Ramjet - or scramjet - engine was designed to travel at speeds of up to 5,000 mph, or 10 times the speed of conventional aircraft, the University of Queensland said in a statement.
"The rocket launch looked as expected. We had another clean liftoff," Prof. Michael Smart said.
Thursday's launch was the second test flight in less than a week, and was intended to generate data about flight performance of a 220-pound scramjet engine with an advanced fuel injector developed by JAXA.
The data will be compared with results of ground tests performed in Japan, the statement said.
The university said it would make an announcement about the results of the experimental flights in the coming weeks.
The U.S. has already carried out a flight test with a scramjet engine, while the European Union, Japan, China, Russia and India are in different stages of testing their technologies...." Entire Article here....
